Saturday, 1 January 2011

About

Who is Polemic Paine?

The name Polemic Paine derived from needing an anonymity behind which to blog for employment and, lesser so, personal reasons. 'Polemic' because I would like to think that what I write can be thought provoking and Paine from the great Thomas Paine.

Polemic Paine was born when I was handed the keys to the Macro Man blog where I cut my writing teeth and soon became the main contributor of 'Team Macro Man'. Having been a casualty of the great City job meltdown of the past couple of years, losing access to Bloomberg charts and analysis meant it was hard to keep up the intricacies of detailed trade ideas and, with a move to a new career, meant that regular posting would be difficult. By chance the original Macro Man was re-emerging after his employer's compliance induced absence and it made sense to pass the keys of the Macro Man blog back to him

Polemic's Pains was ticking along in the background for personal content but has since been resurrected for me to use to vent any feeling I have on anything. Most of it is finance based but not all.

Is your background prestigious enough for me to warrant your views as coming from an 'expert'?

At no point consider me an expert in anything. Science background, stints at various universities, the last being famous for economics, led to a career in the financial markets with postings around the world with large institutions. 25 years of market experience does not make me an expert, it makes me a sanguine cynic towards beliefs peddled by others for their own benefit. I rather believe in building up one's own framework of economic, trading and personal values from first principles and experiences. Don't trust anyone trying to sell you a story, least of all me.

Why do you write then?

I am trying to test some of those aforementioned self derived personal beliefs and theories with a wider audience and hopefully logical feedback will push me back on track should I have strayed. Of course I also like to have fun with parody, poetry and creative stupidity and if I can share that for the enjoyment of others then all the better. Sometimes the steam built up at frustrations over the world's stupidities has to vented in the odd rant too. It is also nice to build an archive of diverse thoughts for my heirs to have a place to refer to when asking about what great great grandpa was like. I wish my ancestors had had this facility.

Would you do link shares and advertising?

Advertising probably no, though there is a price for everything, and link sharing immediately means I have to select who is in and who is out and I don't want to upset anyone by excluding them or upset them by including them amongst the average. I also tend to find blogrolls are a bit like coffee table books. Rarely read but there to give an impression of being well read. I will always make links to references when used.